Jonathan Liew investigates: We are told Pele is the best but his record is
overstated - he is a master of self-promotion and circumstance helped him
achieve pre-eminence

In 1962, a plane carrying the Brazilian football team was crossing the Andes on the way to the World Cup in Chile.

Suddenly, the plane hit a pocket of turbulence, and started shaking violently. Dinner had just been served, and steaks were leaping off the plates. Pandemonium swept the cabin. This was only four years after the Munich air crash had claimed the lives of eight Manchester United players.

In the middle of the consternation, as a plane full of footballers became convinced they were heading for a rocky grave, one man sat in a state of utter restfulness.

His team-mates could scarcely believe their eyes. “You’re crazy!” they said. “Don’t you have family?”

Related Articles

In fact, Pele did have family. But he turned to face his colleagues. “What do you want me to do?” he asked calmly.

The turbulence passed, and shrieking quickly turned to laughter. As Pele later wrote: “I believe in God. If we are going to die, then so be it.”

The first key to understanding Pele is his faith. Most Pele narratives inevitably fixate upon the extreme poverty in which he was raised, first in the southern state of Minas Gerais, and then in the poor Sao Paulo suburb of Bauru. Few deal in any great depth with the devout Catholicism that accompanied him every step of the way. As a child, he would not be allowed to play football in the street unless he went to mass, inextricably intertwining the two destinies in his young mind.

When Pele was nine, Brazil lost to Uruguay in the final match of the 1950 World Cup, an event that traumatised the entire nation. The young Edson Arantes do Nascimento went to his father’s room, which was adorned with a picture of Jesus on the wall, and started wailing.

"Why has this happened?” he screamed at the picture. “Why has it happened to us? Why, Jesus? Why are we being punished?”

“I continued crying, overcome, as I continued my conversation with the picture of Christ,” he remembered. "You know, if I’d been there I wouldn’t have let Brazil lose the Cup. If I’d been there, Brazil would have won.”

Then he went back to his father and told him: “One day, I’ll win you the World Cup.”

Pele’s faith remained undimmed in adulthood. “When I had problems,” he said, “I asked Him why He put me here, unless He wanted me to do good.”

This clutch of anecdotes, probably grotesquely misleading, nonetheless reveals a little of how Pele has always seen himself. Not just as a subject of God – for that could be any of the world’s 1.2 billion Christians – but as his servant. From a very young age, Pele saw his role as one of doing the Almighty’s work on Earth.

An artist's depiction of Pele as Jesus

“In music there is Beethoven and the rest. In football there is Pele and the rest.”

As Pele was brought up to believe unquestioningly in the potency and pre-eminence of God, so generations of football lovers were brought up to believe unquestioningly in the potency and pre-eminence of Pele.

For decades, the fact that Pele was the greatest footballer that ever lived has simply been taken as gospel. Despite the emergence of more recent challengers in Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, Pele remains the reference point against which all are judged.

Those who played with or against him, from Alfredo di Stefano to Ferenc Puskas to Franz Beckenbauer to Bobby Moore, queued up to anoint him as the greatest. As did Pele himself. “In music there is Beethoven and the rest,” he said in 2000. “In football, there is Pele and the rest.”

But it is an orthodoxy that has permeated subsequent generations too. To take one example out of thousands, Cristiano Ronaldo once said: “Pele is the greatest player in football history, and there will only be one Pele.” By the time Ronaldo was born in 1985, Pele had already been retired for eight years.

How can you call someone the greatest player of all time if you’ve barely seen them play?

To be fair, there is a good deal of evidence in his favour. Only the merest fraction of his 1,283 goals (give or take a few) were recorded on film, but what does remain paints a compelling if incomplete portrait of a truly special footballer.

Lightning pace, effortless grace, immense poise, impressive power, supreme cunning and gigantic balls: all are on display. At the very least, there is enough footage to conclude that Pele was not simply Adam Le Fondre with a stepover. He really was astoundingly good at football.

Then there is his record. Three World Cup victories in 1958, 1962 and 1970. Two Intercontinental Cups with Santos. Those 1,283 goals, of which 77 came for Brazil and 12 in the World Cup.

But even as you list Pele’s achievements, it is possible to pick holes in them. Ali Daei of Iran is international football’s leading goalscorer, with 109 goals in 149 caps. This does not make him the greatest player of all time. Hundreds of Pele’s goals came in friendlies, against up-country teams or down-at-heel invitational sides. Pele scored against the very best, but he scored against the very worst too.

His World Cup record, while impressive, is susceptible to overstatement. Injury in 1962 means that effectively, he only really won two World Cups, and was not the outstanding player either time. In 1958, it was Didi who was voted player of the tournament, while in 1970, it was very much a team effort, with the likes of Tostao and Jairzinho at least as important.

Pele’s home country has long been aware of this. Ask a Brazilian who is their greatest ever player and you are as likely to hear Heleno, Garrincha, Jairzinho or Zizinho mentioned. Pele’s multiple post-football careers, wayward predictions and often contradictory public statements have turned him into a figure frequently parodied, and occasionally disdained.

“I believe that Pele knows nothing about football,” current Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said in 2002. “He has done nothing as a coach and all his analysis always turns out to be wrong. He’s an idol in all of Brazil, but his analysis is worth nothing.”

“There is a sense that Pele belongs more to global heritage than he does to Brazil’s,” the Brazil-based writer Alex Bellos explained in his book Futebol. “He is an international reference point, and one who is simple to understand: a poor black man who became the best in the world through dedication and skill. But Brazilians do not love him the way they love Garrincha.”

Just a couple of weeks ago, Pele was criticised again for coming out against the recent political protests, describing them as “a great loss for the country”. Not for the first time, the arch conformist had shown himself to be out of touch with the skittish insurgency characterising the new Brazil.

“I’ve already fought for my country. Surely I don’t need to do it again?”

If you really boil it down, Pele’s legacy rests on those two World Cup wins. In 1958, he forced his way into the side halfway through the tournament as a 17-year-old, scoring a hat-trick in the semi-final against France and two goals in the final against Sweden. In 1970, he was the most famous player in perhaps the greatest side in international history. Later that decade, a survey showed that Pele was the second most-recognised brand name in Europe after Coca Cola.

What was interesting about Pele’s exaltation was how much of it was done in retrospect. Contemporary reports of the 1958 final clearly mention Pele, but reserve most praise for Garrincha, the most flamboyant player on the pitch. In the following months and years, though, the story of the 17-year-old kid from the poor background began to take an increasing hold.

Books, films and newspaper articles began to accumulate. His club Santos, sensing they might have the box office draw of the century on their hands, took him out on tour, playing exhibition games all over the world. Pele played more than 100 games in 1959, including 15 in three weeks on a tour of Europe. By the early 1960s, he was regularly playing three times a week with extensive travelling in between.

These tours served a dual function. Not only did they help to bulk up Pele’s record; they also spread the gospel.

In hindsight, Brazil’s 1958 win, coming so soon after the disaster of 1950, came to be seen as the turning point for an emerging, confident nation. “With the 1958 victory, Brazilians changed even physically,” wrote Nelson Rodriguez, the playwright who would go on to be one of Brazil’s most influential football writers in Brazilian history. “After 1958, the Brazilian was no longer a mongrel among men, and Brazil was no longer a mongrel among nations.”

The young, upwardly-mobile Pele assumed the face of this new Brazil. Later still, the joyful, fluid 4-2-4 formation Brazil deployed in that tournament would be set in contrast to the “anti-football” that would emerge from Argentina in the mid-1960s.

Pele takes a shot at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico

It was a marvellous tale, and Pele fitted perfectly into it. He knew it too, unsuccessfully attempting to use his fame to lever himself out of doing national service at the age of 18. “I’ve already fought for my country,” he protested. “Surely I don’t need to go to the army to do it again?”

In this country, it seems Pele’s myth was firmly established by 1964. That was the year England went to the Maracana and were caned 5-1, with Pele scoring four goals. “ENGLAND BEWITCHED BY BLACK DIAMOND”, read the headline in The Times. The report was more effusive still: “This was fiesta, this was a reflection of the moving colour film, Black Orpheus; this was life; this was the night of Pele… it was worth being alive to see, even in defeat.”

There is another factor to consider: television. The 1970 World Cup was the first to be broadcast worldwide in colour, and it was Pele’s great fortune to emerge just as mass media was catalysing an unprecedented explosion in the global scale of the game. Had he been born in 1920 rather than 1940, like the Botafogo genius Heleno de Freitas, it is likely almost no footage of him would have survived. And it is just as likely that like Heleno de Freitas, most people would never have heard of him.

“Pele has no colour or race or religion. He is accepted everywhere.”

The Pele who would go on to describe himself as the Beethoven of football had still not emerged by 1963. “It wasn’t me who started people saying I’m the best player in the world,” he said in that year. “I’ve got nothing to do with it. I believe the greatest player hasn’t been born yet. He’d have to be the best in every position: goalie, defence, forward.”

But what had begun to develop was an awareness of his own marketability. Following the 1958 World Cup, lucrative offers had flooded in from Europe, but he turned them all down, instead negotiating a deal with Santos by which he would receive half of any fee for playing an exhibition match abroad. He entrusted his financial affairs to a Spanish businessman called Pepe Gordo, who turned out to be downright useless: by 1966, pretty much all his investments had failed, and Pele was driven to the brink of bankruptcy.

In retrospect, it was a formative experience. In order to clear his debts, Pele negotiated a new deal with Santos on unfavourable terms, and took much greater control over his financial affairs. He signed a $120,000 deal with Puma to wear their boots, and during the 1970 World Cup was often to be seen very conspicuously stooping to tie his laces.

It was the beginning of what one might describe as the Pele brand. Over the subsequent decades, Pele has used his face and name to promote everything from Hublot watches to Subway sandwiches to erectile dysfunction.

Pele and swimmer Michael Phelps endorse Subway

Now 73, his thirst for endorsements is as unquenched as ever. Some weeks, he will visit three or four continents doing promotional work. Bloomberg estimate the Pele brand will generate $25 million in revenue this year.

“It’s not easy to separate Edson from Pele psychologically,” Pele wrote a few years ago. “Pele has taken on a life of his own. He overtook everything. I sense the dichotomy between Edson and Pele every time I take out my Mastercard. On one side is the image of me doing a bicycle kick together with the signature of Pele, and on the other is my real signature.”

But none of this would have been possible without the tenacity of the original Pele legend. The story of the poor black kid conquering the world is, essentially, what these companies are buying into. “Pele,” he says, “has no colour or race or religion. He is accepted everywhere.”

It may or may not surprise you to know that Pele is a Mastercard ambassador.

Pele on a Mastercard at the time of the 2002 World Cup

“Who was I? What was I? Just a footballer? No, it had to be more than that.”

Of course, everybody has to put food on the table. All athletes endorse products. But it is possible to identify a certain relish in Pele as he Hoovers up these sponsorship deals. He was not contractually obliged, for example, to include a plug for Mastercard in his autobiography. But he did it anyway. Why? Perhaps the answer lies in his character: rational, accumulative, fiercely competitive.

Being the best at football was not enough in itself for Pele. After all, he was God’s servant. He had to conquer all he saw.

“Who was I?” he would reflect. “What was I? Just a footballer? No, it had to be more than that.”

One of the preoccupations that comes through in Pele’s autobiography is race. For all his claims to be colourless and classless, being black shaped Pele’s view of the world, and the world’s view of him. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to ban slavery. Pele was only three generations removed from his slave ancestors. Even in 1966, his marriage to a white woman attracted negative comment from some newspaper columnists.

The Brazil 1958 team were the first genuinely multiracial side to win the World Cup. “All the other teams had only white people,” he wrote later. “I thought it was really weird. I can remember asking my team-mates: ‘Is it only in Brazil that there are blacks?’”

In these circumstances, then, perhaps it is not surprising that the narrative of the black boy rising above his disadvantaged station to smash open the “white” worlds of football and business held an intimate appeal for Pele. There is a proto-messianism to Pele’s self-image, especially when he feels he is not being sufficiently revered. “In America, Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King have wonderful memorial museums,” he wrote. “But in Brazil, there is no Pele museum. There is something not right about that, it seems to me.”

Pele in the film Once In A Lifetime

This is how Pele saw himself – a cultural icon like Elvis, a great liberator like Dr King. It explains why he was so keen to shape his own legend. And it explains why he continues to take any paying gig. “People treat you differently when you have money and celebrity,” he wrote. “It is almost like a race apart – not black, or white, but famous.”

In 2012, the Pele Museum was opened in Santos.

“The truth is that I hate seeing dead bodies”

Contrary to many impressions, Garrincha and Pele were not enemies. They were just different. But despite coming from similarly poor backgrounds, the differences between them could scarcely have been more pronounced. Bellos again: “Pele is revered. Garrincha is adored. Garrincha argued with the establishment. Pele became the establishment.”

But many Brazilians will tell you that Garrincha was at least as good a footballer as Pele, if not better. Pele would beat a man because he had to. Garrincha would do it because he wanted to. Garrincha virtually won the 1962 World Cup single-handedly. Pele could never claim that.

But the one thing Garrincha was less good at was self-promotion. Garrincha had little time for business empires and product endorsements. He hardly ever did interviews. He never stayed in the public eye for long enough to develop a persona. What he wanted to do, above all else, was to get drunk and get laid. This he did with remarkable efficiency, fathering at least 14 children before dying of severe liver failure at the age of 49.

Pele did not even attend his funeral. “The truth is that I hate seeing dead bodies,” he said by way of excuse. “I prefer to pray on my own.”

Years later Diego Maradona took issue with Pele for this. “I would have liked him to look after Garrincha instead of letting him die broke,” he wrote. In truth, there was little anybody could have done to arrest Garrincha’s decline, but Maradona’s intervention opened up a new fault-line between the two players now generally regarded as the greatest ever.

Pele and Diego Maradona have never enjoyed a happy relationship

“We never clicked,” Maradona said. “We always rubbed each other up the wrong way; we would see each other and sparks would fly.” A less charitable observer would say they turn into children around each other: a petty enmity that has diminished them both.

Every couple of years the world is treated afresh to the sight and sound of the world’s two most respected footballers essentially trolling each other. Maradona describes Pele as looking like “a doll that’s being moved by remote control”. Pele accuses Maradona of going into coaching for the money. Maradona tells Pele he should be in a museum. Pele says Maradona must be in love with him. Maradona calls Pele gay. It’s simultaneously wonderful and awful.

But here’s the point. There’s a reason why Pele and Maradona are always discussed as the two greatest footballers ever, and Garrincha isn’t even in the conversation. Garrincha’s not around to state his case. Perhaps it’s time to admit that greatness is two parts genius to one part salesmanship.

“A story in Brazil isn’t worth telling unless there are alternative versions to call upon.”

There’s something in psychology called the “reminiscence bump”. You’ll be familiar with the concept. In essence, it’s the reason all your favourite books and favourite films and favourite albums are the ones from your youth. Your teens and your 20s are when your memory is at its most efficient, which is why memories from your youth tend to be the strongest of all.

In 2012, three psychologists called Steve Janssen, David Rubin and Martin Conway decided to see if the effect extended to football. They asked more than 600 participants to name who they thought were the five greatest footballers of all time. Seeing as the questionnaire was presented in Dutch on the Amsterdam University website, perhaps it is little surprise that most people named Johan Cruyff (86 per cent), followed by Pele (56 per cent) and Diego Maradona (48 per cent).

What was more interesting was who had named who. Pele was mentioned most frequently by people born between 1946 and 1955. Cruyff was most popular amongst those born between 1956 and 1965. And if you were born between 1966 and 1975, chances are you said Maradona.

The researchers matched up the age of the respondents with the career-midpoint of the players they had selected. The magic number was 17. That was the age at which the strongest impressions were made. In short, you’re more likely to rate a great player in your late teens than at any other stage of your life.

Coincidentally, that was Pele’s age when he played in the 1958 World Cup. Perhaps that’s why he ended up as his own biggest fan.

Source: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

But there’s a semi-serious point at the heart of all this. “A story in Brazil isn’t worth telling unless there are alternative versions to call upon,” writes Pele at the start of his autobiography, and in the indomitably stupid debate over the world’s greatest player lies a little of football’s maddening charm.

And in retrospect, it’s easy to see why the generation that grew up with Pele was so keen to put him on a pedestal. Of course he was a brilliant player, but maybe there’s something more sinister at work there too. The legend of Pele was bequeathed to each subsequent generation almost as a fait accompli, as if the debate over the world’s greatest ever footballer was over before most of us had even clapped eyes on this world. “Here, take Pele,” the older generation seemed to be telling us, “as lasting and incontrovertible proof that everything was better long ago. You are welcome.”

But the virtue of youth is its resilience. Perhaps in a half-century from now, Pele’s name will be long forgotten, and our grandchildren will be embroiled in a similarly tedious debate about the relative merits of Lionel Messi and Ross Barkley. Every generation ultimately remakes its own truth.

Bibliography

Alex Bellos, Futebol: The Brazilian Way Of LifeAndreas Campomar, Golazo! A History of Latin American FootballRuy Castro, GarrinchaPele, My Life And The Beautiful GamePele, The Autobiography The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, volume 65Jonathan Wilson, Inverting The Pyramid